Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says a "wuk" war has re­placed gang war in ar­eas deemed hot spots. He said there was now a "war" for peo­ple to se­cure jobs in the "Colour Me Or­ange" project. Mooni­lal was speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day, dur­ing an ear­ly-morn­ing tour of work sites in east Port-of-Spain and Beetham Gar­dens in the re­cent­ly-launched $300 mil­lion project by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). "I was in­formed every­where I went...I asked the work­ers if they had any prob­lems, par­tic­u­lar­ly with crime or crim­i­nal el­e­ments, and the an­swer was a re­sound­ing no," he said. "What I was told is that they have no gang war...They have a 'wuk' war. "It re­al­ly is a war for per­sons to get jobs be­cause more and more peo­ple want jobs, so it is a 'wuk' war and not a gang war."

Mooni­lal, HDC's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John and oth­er of­fi­cials vis­it­ed Dun­can, Nel­son and George Streets, Man­go Rose and 14th-21st Streets in Beetham Gar­dens where men and women clad in or­ange jer­seys were busy sweep­ing, weed­ing and stack­ing old, rusty ap­pli­ances in­to wait­ing dump trucks. Mooni­lal and John ar­rived on Dun­can Street at 8 am, dressed in jeans and steel-tipped boots. "We are ex­treme­ly proud of this pro­gramme," the min­is­ter said. "We are not tak­ing on the de­trac­tors." Scores of work­ers moved briskly clear­ing de­bris from the road­way and pave­ment, armed with new brooms and wheel­bar­rows, while oth­ers, al­ready drenched in per­spi­ra­tion, bent down low, cut­ting grass.

"I am ex­treme­ly hap­py and grat­i­fied with the pro­gramme," Mooni­lal said. "This morn­ing we saw a lot of young peo­ple-male and fe­male-and we saw a lot of en­er­gy. "These peo­ple came out to work this morn­ing at 7 o'clock-7.30, and from what we have seen, they have been work­ing very hard ear­ly in the morn­ing." He said the young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties were hard-work­ing and all they need­ed was eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty. Mooni­lal said if there were any protests, it would be for jobs or an ex­ten­sion of cur­rent jobs. Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists Hazel Smith, Lennox Smith and Chris­tine "Twig­gy" Levia al­so ac­com­pa­nied the team. In each area, Levia asked the work­ers loud­ly if they had any prob­lems with crime and whether they want­ed an ex­ten­sion of the project.

Each time they re­spond­ed "no" and "yes" re­spec­tive­ly. Mooni­lal said no con­trac­tor was in­volved in the project and that HDC would con­tin­ue to re­cruit and pay work­ers. He al­so as­sured that "we are well or­gan­ised to pay the first pay­ment." Mean­while, John as­sured that any dis­crep­an­cies with pay­ments would be re­solved. An­der­son Wil­son, a res­i­dent of Beetham Gar­dens, praised the ini­tia­tive. "The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship putting things in place," he said. "It have no ex­cuse if they (res­i­dents) go and do some­thing...they should be jailed im­me­di­ate­ly. "It have help and we are so grate­ful and thank­ful and on be­half of the Beetham and every­body else we want to say thank you very much."